Thursday, 3 July 2014

HAWAY 5-0

Portland Park in Ashington was one of my favourite football grounds, decrepit but rich in history, with one of the friendliest clubhouses in the North East. It is now a supermarket.

The following match report appeared in the Ashington fanzine, The Pit Pony Express in March 2001.

Ashington v Norton & Stockton Ancients

There are a lot of things that tell a man he is getting old.
You notice that if you eat a balti after nine o’clock you can’t get to sleep,
that jeans manufacturers are making their waistbands much tighter than they
used to and that sheepskin slippers are damned comfortable and who cares what
they look like, anyway, I'm only going to the bloody post office. Even more telling is the
way people treat you when you have an accident.

Coming out of the clubhouse into Portland Park on the
evening after this game something happened. One minute I was walking along
expounding to my two companions on the ridiculousness of the Northern League’s
stringent ground safety policy, the next I had missed my footing and fallen
down two steps of terracing. In days gone by my mates would surely have reacted
to this event by laughing hysterically and yelling “A big round of applause for
the acrobat” and other such witticism. This month, however, I turn 40. So
instead of mirth I got concern. “Are you all right? Don’t get up straight away.
Wait till you feel fully recovered”. All very laudable, I’m sure. Though
personally I’d have preferred scorn.

I was not injured in the slightest, though I did feel
mightily humiliated, AN EMOTION DOUBTLESS SHARED BY THE DAY’S OTHER VISITORS
FROM TEESSIDE, NORTON AND STOCKTON ANCIENTS (I put this latter clause in block
capitals in case any young aspiring writers are eager
to see how an experienced hack such as myself sets about linking two
completely unrelated pieces of twaddle in so seamless a manner that nobody but
a certified expert can detect the join). For the latter had, in the immortal words of Hunter
S. Thompson, just been thrashed like a red-headed stepchild.

Not that anyone would have predicted a 5-0 scoreline after
forty minutes, Norton more than matching the home side and playing some neat
football in midfield. Unhappily for them they lacked the Colliers cutting edge
in front of goal. If only the legendary RA “ Bullet” Smith were still on their books things
might have been different. Although given the fact that he would be at least
ninety, probably not.

With half-time approaching Ross Atkinson showed how it
should be done, latching onto a through ball and going one-on-one with the
Ancients' gargantuan goalie. Sensing that to attempt to go round this massive
figure would require a 4WD and a fortnight’s supply of food, Atkinson wisely
chose to lob him instead and the ball dropped nicely into the empty net.

Ashington's second came shortly after the interval. Unfortunately I
had been distracted by a picture of Jimmy Adamson in the clubhouse and didn’t
see it. I am reliably informed that Robson scored it. Other information is
lacking, but years of missing goals at live football tell me that it was in all
likelihood a wickedly swerving shot struck with the outside of the right foot
from thirty yards which practically tore a hole in the roof of the net. And I’m
sure the player himself would confirm that if asked.

At this point Norton became disillusioned. Heads went down.
“We’re not talking anymore,” the giant keeper said more or less to
himself.Porter added a third with a
spectacular diving header worthy of Tony Mowbray in his pomp and the visitor’s
manager was heard to inquire of an assistant “Have you got the petrol money?”

Lawson and Robson finished the rout with goals that were
almost mirror images of Atkinson’s opener, the Norton custodian showing the
sort of aversion to chips normally associated with weightwatchers.

Five-nil. The biggest victory margin I have ever seen at a
Northern League game. Though, admittedly I don’t get to Crook very often. Which
is probably just as well. I seem to recall the terracing at Millfield is a bit
steep for old-timers like me.

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About the Blogger

Harry Pearson is the author of The Far Corner and nine other works of non-fiction, including Slipless in Settle - winner of the 2011 MCC/Cricket Society Prize. From 1997 through to 2012 he wrote over 700 columns for the Guardian sports section. He has worked for When Saturday Comes since 1988.

About This Blog

When The Far Corner came out a well known football writer whose work I like and respect told me he been unable to finish it. Too much non-League. Too many howls of outrage in the lumpy rain of steeltown winters. Not enough rapture. ‘I’m only interested in the great stars, the great occasions,’ he said, ‘To me football is like opera.’

I don’t care much for opera. And so I have carried on much as I did before: writing about unsung people in rough places where the PA plays 'Sex on the Beach' in the coal-scented February fog and men with ill-advised hair bellow, 'Christ on a bike, this is the drizzling shits.'I could justify this with grandiosity. I could say Dickens and Balzac, Orwell and Zola were more interested in the lower divisions of society than its elite. I could tell you that the sportswriters I most admire are almost all Americans whose primary subject is boxing. AJ Liebling, WC Heinz, Thomas Hauser, Phil Berger and the rest inhabit a world where hucksters, gangsters, the desperate, the doomed and the mad hang out in stinking gyms and amidst the rattle of slot machines, and trainers such as Roger Mayweather say things like, "You don't need no strategy to fight Arturo Gatti. Close your eyes, throw your hands and you'll hit him in the fucking face."

But that is to be wise after the event. Norman Mailer said every writer writes what he can. It is not a choice. We play the cards we're dealt.

A few years ago I stood in a social club kitchen near Ashington listening to an old bloke named Bill talk about a time in the early 1950s when, on a windswept field at East Hirst, beneath anthracite sky, he’d watched a skinny blond teenager ‘float over that mud like a little angel’, glowing at the memory of Bobby Charlton.

Opera is pantomime for histrionic show offs, but this? This is true romance.

The First 30 Years features some new writing and lots of older pieces going back to the late-1980s. This work first appeared in When Saturday Comes, The Guardian, various other newspapers, fanzines and a number of those glossy men's lifestyle magazines that have women in bras on the cover. It is my intention over the next year or so to collect it all here, if for no other reason than to prove to my family that I did do some work every once in a while.

In keeping with the original rhythms of the game I'll post a new piece every Saturday (kick-off times may vary)

The best images here have been provided by a trio of the great photographers I've been lucky enough to work with over the years. I'm very grateful to Tim Hetherington, Colin McPherson, and Peter Robinson for letting me use their work - all of which is copyright of those individuals and cannot be reproduced without their permission.